"The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret." — T. Pratchett

Cheesy metal video OTD: “Runes to My Memory”

This may turn into at least a semi-regular feature, judging by some of the things that keep popping up in my YouTube recommendations. 🙂

Looking through more from Amon Amarth, it was hard to pick just one of their videos, but I decided to go with the one initially suggested. They’re technically very good, with some songs that are catchy in a melodic way, in spite of the (now so common) growly vocal style that gets on my nerves after a while.

But, I have to admit that a lot of the Viking metal subgenre just makes me giggle, and giving your band a Tolkien-derived name doesn’t help. Maybe it looks less cheesy in Scandiwegia, judging by the popularity. I feel a little less snotty, because I’d also have to giggle at bands pulling history from my own cultural background into music in the same way! If the delivery of a lot of it didn’t come across so earnest, I might not get as amused.

This also made me giggle at a young anti-immigration Ben Franklin’s comments about those “swarthy” Swedes he’d probably never even seen–among other groups not, erm, generally known as “swarthy” these days. If not quite as much as this live video: Amon Amarth – Varyags of Miklagård, live @ Ankkarock 02.08.2009. A lot of these folks glow like Anne Rice vampires. (Not intended as any kind of insult; it’s just very distinctive! People from around the Baltic are the lowest in base melanin, anywhere.) Also, reminded by not only the band who all have it but the crowd too, I really did get startled a couple of times by the prevalence of variations on reddish-blond hair in Stockholm!

Ah, the joys of pontification from ignorance.

They weren’t doing as much windmilling in either video here, but I really am getting old and decrepit. Just watching it makes my whole spine hurt, these days. 😉

Totally coincidentally, the first windmilling GIF I found seems to be from this video…

Besides my frequent amusement at some popular subgenres, Sweden, Finland, and Norway are likely to be pretty heavily represented here anyway.

Amusingly, one time when we were going through the local Tesco checkout a couple of years ago, the young woman ringing our food up started going on at some length about how cool it was that Mr. U is from the Land of All The Great Metal–where she almost wished she lived, because Great Metal. (I was actually less put off by the usual “where are you from?” quizzing, since she was British Asian.) Even more amusing, since it was pretty much wasted on someone who prefers to listen to, say, Kate Bush. 🙂 But, yeah, there’s an awful lot of metal coming out of Sweden.

And I feel kind of bad about finding some of it unintentionally hilarious, but… 😉